ur attitude when we use the word _good_ or
_useful,_ and when we use the word _beautiful._ And we can add to
our partial formula "beautiful implies satisfaction and preference"--the
distinguishing predicate--"_of a contemplative kind._" This
general statement will be confirmed by an everyday anomaly in our
use of the word beautiful; and the examination of this seeming
exception will not only exemplify what I have said about our
attitude when employing that word, but add to this information the
name of the emotion corresponding with that attitude: the emotion
of _admiration._ For the selfsame object or proceeding may
sometimes be called _good_ and sometimes _beautiful,_ according
as the mental attitude is practical or contemplative. While we
admonish the traveller to take a certain road because he will find it
_good,_ we may hear that same road described by an enthusiastic
coachman as _beautiful, anglice fine_ or _splendid,_ because there
is no question of immediate use, and the road's qualities are merely
being contemplated with admiration. Similarly, we have all of us
heard an engineer apply to a piece of machinery, and even a surgeon
to an operation, the apparently far-fetched adjective Beautiful, or
one of the various equivalents, fine, splendid, glorious (even
occasionally _jolly!)_ by which Englishmen express their
admiration. The change of word represents a change of attitude. The
engineer is no longer bent upon using the machine, nor the surgeon
estimating the advantages of the operation. Each of these highly
practical persons has switched off his practicality, if but for an
imperceptible fraction of time and in the very middle of a practical
estimation or even of practice itself. The machine or operation, the
skill, the inventiveness, the fitness for its purposes, are being
considered _apart from action,_ and advantage, means and time,
to-day or yesterday; _platonically_ we may call it from the first great
teacher of aesthetics. They are being, in one word, contemplated
with admiration. And _admiration_ is the rough and ready name for
the mood, however transient, for the emotion, however faint,
wherewith we greet whatever makes us contemplate, because
contemplation happens to give satisfaction. The satisfaction may be
a mere skeleton of the "I'd rather than not" description; or it may be
a massive alteration in our being, radiating far beyond the present,
evoking from the past similar conditions to corroborate i